When we understand all that constitutes the cognitive unconscious, our understanding of the nature of consciousness is vastly enlarged. Consciousness goes way beyond mere awareness of something, beyond the mere experience of qualia, beyond the awaren...
The problem with classical disembodied scientific realism is that it takes two intertwined and inseparable dimensions of all experience - the awareness of the experiencing organism and the stable entities and structures it encounters - and erects the...
It has been a long trip," said Milo, climbing onto the couch where the princesses sat; "but we would have been here much sooner if I hadn't made so many mistakes. I'm afraid it's all my fault." "You must never feel badly about making mistakes," expla...
What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ...
We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them. ... Long after he's dead, someone else will own those stupid little boxes, and then someone after him, just as so...
The tragic fear and pity may be aroused by the Spectacle; but they may also be aroused by the very structure and incidents of the play—which is the better way and shows the better poet. The Plot in fact should be so framed that even without seeing ...
When a memory fails to appear, it seems as though the time when it was created did not really exist, and maybe that is true. Time itself is nothing; only the experience of it is something. When that dies, it assumes the form of a denial, the symbol o...
Now that child reminds me of something our sages taught. When a baby comes into the world, it's hands are clenched, right? Like this?" He made a fist. "Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say 'The whole world is ...
But if Hugh dies first, would I ever be able to stop saying, "we" and say "I"? I doubt it. I do not think that death can take away the fact that Hugh and I are "we" and "us," a new creature born of the time of our marriage vows, which has grown along...
The sun would still rise, the seasons would still come, life would continue. I was thankful to have been a part of it; I would take the memories and savor them for the life ahead. I had been given the components that would comprise the fate of my des...
And I shuddered at the apparent freedom so many women felt simply to take what they wanted without regard for other women's feelings. It was as though we were all crazed customers at some kind of year-end shoe sale, shoving our fellow females out of ...
What y'all ladies got to share? Hmmm, what you bitches got?" Aunt Georgia sighed and squinted at the boy. She said, "The Lord loves a cheerful giver, but I'm just not in the mood." The thug moved his hand from his crotch to his scalp, still scratchin...
You fascinate me in every way," Harry whispered, his hand playing gently in her hair . "There are mysteries in your soul that will take a lifetime to uncover…and I want to know every one of them." No one had ever called her mysterious before. While...
Whatever else she’d been on the verge of saying lodged in her throat as if her mind had suddenly registered what he'd meant. A solitary tear crested and trailed unchecked down her cheek. Oh, hell. At that moment, he'd give his life to take away the...
Nobody ever talks about the pyramids that weren't built, the books that weren't written, the songs that weren't sung. Stop letting your fear condemn you to mediocrity. Get out of your own way. Your dreams are a poetic reflection of your soul's wishes...
One of the dangers of the spiritual story is that it disassociates humans from reality. Relieving world hunger, crime and suffering are replaced with fantasies of other worlds, dimensions, gods or forces that will magically take care of humanities pl...
Deception is nowhere more common than in religion. And the persons most easily and damningly deceived are the leaders. Those who deceive others are first themselves deceived, for not many, I think, begin with evil intent. The devil, after all, is a s...
In a secular world, which is what most of us in Europe and North America live in, history takes on the role of showing us good and evil, virtues and vices. Religion no longer plays as important a part as it once did in setting moral standards and tra...
He takes the beer and sets it on the floor. "I've never been into guys. So, this attraction to you is a little weird for me." I try to ease his mind by telling him that a lot of straight guys have at least one homosexual experience in their lifetime ...
I count everything. Even numbers, odd numbers, multiples of 10. I count the ticks of the clock i count the tocks of the clock I count the lines between the lines on a sheet of paper. I count the broken beats of my heart I count my pulse and my blinks...
It is the ego's purpose that makes everything seem dis-united and like separate events. The constant purpose is the thread that ties all events together. The script is really a continuous thing, rather than discreet events. I did this next and this h...
